Pasadena comes up with plan to keep walkers, bikers safe

PASADENA - As more and more cyclists and walkers are using what one bike advocate calls "SoCal's biggest outdoor gym," the city officials are getting increasingly worried about their safety.

To that end, city planners are proposing to expand the existing 8-foot walking lane of the Rose Bowl loop into a 13-foot lane that will be more visibly marked with bright paint. The plan will come before the City Council on February 22.

In the meantime, city planners are presenting their ideas to cyclists, pedestrians, and local community members.

Many Rose Bowl users have voiced safety complaints to the city since the city several years ago created a four-foot marked buffer zone to divide pedestrians from bikers and drivers.

The problem with the buffer zone is that runners like to jog in it and bikes like to ride in it, said Bahman Janka, a city transportation administrator during a community meeting Wednesday

"Our good intent was to keep pedestrians in one area and bikes in another," said Janka. "But it didn't work out the way we would have liked."

In addition to widening the walkway, the city would also change some of the intersections at the corners of the park where there are road mergers.

Rose Bowl users complained the intersections are unsafe.

Additionally, the city may put in new turning restrictions to prevent cars from making left-hand turns into stadium parking lots cross with pedestrian lanes.

At the meeting, Janka also presented a possible future proposal for the the two-lane road that circles the Rose Bowl: making a clockwise bike lane and a counter-clockwise car lane.

To do that the city would have to first commission a traffic study, which means it is not likely to happen anytime soon, said Janka.

While people at the meeting were generally encouraged by the plans, several people said they felt the city was too slow to make changes in the area.

"This area has become SoCal's biggest outdoor gym and it should be treated as such," said Tim Brick, a longtime bike advocate and biologist who works in the Arroyo Seco.

Brick and others suggested the city limit car traffic in the area to allow for more bikes and pedestrians.

That didn't set well with several local residents who said they use the roads to get to and from their homes.

For the most part though, people at the meeting, pedestrians or bikers, agreed that the main safety issue at the Rose Bowl loop is that too many people walking with traffic instead of facing it. Pedestrians are easily surprised by fast-moving bikes or cars.

There have been past conflicts between walkers and bikers at the area, culminating in the summer of 2007, when the City Council proposed a ban on the "peloton" pack-style bike riding where large groups of bikers move together at high speeds around the loop.

The Council ultimately decided against the ban, but bike riders at the Rose Bowl have remained a concern, with the city holding several meetings about the issue since.

Frustrated bikers have long contended that if pedestrians just walk facing traffic they will see the riders coming and not be surprised.

But members of the peloton who attended Wednesday's meeting were intent on reaching out to pedestrians.

"I just wanted to extended an olive branch to the walkers out there," said cyclist Lon Bender. "We are only concerned about which way people walk because we don't want anyone to get hurt... it's important you know that we are not a bunch of maniacs."